Duolingo really is speedrunning dystopia rn.
I uninstalled it today. I wrote to their support telling them why I wasn’t going to continue using it, and got a AI written response back. Welp.
I had a streak of over 1200 days, and after years of reduction in quality and them constantly making the ad based version harder and harder to use, I finally left. AI was the last straw.
I have my eyes on Lingonaut, an app still in beta, and being created by volunteers for free to recreate the early days of Duolingo.
1200 days of language learning? Different languages or the same one? If it’s the same one you probably don’t need an app anymore. Try talking to natives in your chosen second language. You might be surprised how much you know. I used duo for about a year when i moved to a different language country. After that year i found it was holding me back more than helping.
The same language, but I only did about 15 minutes a day. I am more the “pick away at it a little bit” than an “immerse your entire life in it” kind of learner. I learned a lot, and can have basic conversations at this point, but I still have a long way to go and will continue using some kind of language app going forward. I watch media too which helps. Apps are just one tool of many.
Do you just force yourself into their day and start talking at them? And you don’t feel guilty for forcing them to talk to you?
Extroverts are wild lol
I live in colombia so it’d be pretty difficult to find someone who doesn’t speak spanish. Why would i feel guilty for talking to someone? I don’t force anyone to talk i just talk to them normally. I find a lot of times if they know a little english they like to practice that as much as i like to practice spanish.
I don’t force anyone to talk i just talk to them normally.
That’s the same thing - you interrupt their day and insert yourself into it by barging in to talk at them, forcing them to have an interaction with you.
Why would i feel guilty for talking to someone?
The fact that you’re asking this is amazing to me. You can’t even imagine it!
No joke, you should go to therapy for that.
Average .ml user
wow it’s like I never left reddit 🥲
To, what? Convince me that being talked at by a stranger when I have my own stuff going on isn’t rude and annoying? I certainly don’t like it when people do that to me!
There are some spaces where being talked to by strangers is acceptable, but just doing it to everyone wherever in another country is alien behavior to me. I honestly don’t get it.
Like, do they just sit next to strangers on the bus and talk at them? I think I’d die!
You’re getting mad about imaginary situations. It’s kind of pathetic.
Dude you got issues if you can’t talk to people. How do you accomplish any task without interacting with people? And why learn a second language if you arent going to talk to others in said language?
I just don’t want to bother anyone.
I can still listen.
Everyone has different comfort levels when interacting with people. Try and find situations where you feel it would be less of a bother. For example, if Spanish is a language you are learning, you can go to a Spanish or Latin American restaurant, and mention you want to practice. It is worth asking if the server speaks the language, so as not to assume.
Posts like this are a psy op to keep English language speakers (especially in North America) lonely and atomized. There are numerous state and nonstate actors who benefit from this
If you are in public, you should expect to be spoken to. Conversations between strangers are an inherent part of existing in public in human society. Doing away with this causes loneliness on the level of a public health crisis
You’re getting base and superstructure reversed.
This feeling of the rudeness of interrupting other people in public spaces arises from our material conditions. There are limited hours in a day and we have to give up at least eight (or more) of those hours for wages/commuting. Then the other eight (or fewer) hours cram in as many chores, hobbies, chores, entertainment, and chores as we can before we have to sleep and go back to work.
This produces hyper-alienated hyper-individuals that don’t talk to anyone and only work. It’s unhealthy and lonely.
But you aren’t going to fix this by just forcing your way into other people’s lives and making them talk to you! That doesn’t change the material base. You’re just wasting whatever limited time they have between shifts and probably just ruining their day.
Doing away with this requires restructuring society and production, not brute forcing the issue by talking at people.
In my opinion duolingo type apps should never beeused more than about 90 days. Those first few months when you know nothing they are a good way to get something but as time goes on your time is better spent in native content.
Depends on how intense you use it in those 90 days, burning general yes - it helps you with the first steps, but then you’ll learn much more by e.g. watching videos, reading, joining a discord community in that language for a game you play,… in the language
If you are not studying very intensely then you will never learn a language so quit trying to fool yourself.
I’m a fan of lingodeer a lot so far. Already learned more in 40 days than I did with 5 months of Duolingo
I paid for Lingodeer Lifetime, which was $120 at the time. I thought that was pretty hefty already, but it was like 8 months of monthly subscription, and I figured I would need that much time to get through the course anyway. “Regular” price for lifetime is apparently $300, but they constantly run sales that take it down to more reasonable amounts.
On the other hand, I have to admit that the quality of the course is worth the $300 and I too learned more from a few months of Lingodeer than 2 years of Duolingo. They’re also honest in that they teach you all the grammar fairly quickly with a minimal vocabulary and then just end the course with the advice to start reading books. They’re not trapping you in language purgatory like Duolingo does.
I also went for the lifetime license when it was offered to me on sale and I felt like it was worth it given I’m learning two languages and the quality of the program.
Replace these vulture CEOs with AI and the only use it for recommendations. Profit margins will rise when you aren’t wasting them on golden parachutes and some fuckwit’s next yacht. This will only continue as long as one socially inept and willfully ignorant is pulling lever at the top, making decision based on their experience being complete detached from 99% of the rest of humanity.
For refugees, I can’t recommend Lingq enough. I tried every app in the past to learn Spanish and it was the only one that really moved the needle.
I’ll check this out. I feel I’ve had some progress, but it really does plateau.
Quietly? Seems like it’s been loudly, and on fire. And smelly.
was duolingo ever actually good for language learning tho…?
I feel like people constantly shit on Duolingo and other things like it, especially compared to other forms of language study like full classes, immersing yourself in that language via cultural exports (movies, TV shows, books, etc.), or interacting with people that speak that language.
But I think that’s kinda missing the point — Duo and other programs structured like it offer a way to learn a decent chunk of a language without a lot of effort. If you put in a bit of time every day or so and take things at least a little seriously, my understanding is that you can learn a lot. Maybe you won’t be truly fluent, and certainly you won’t learn as much as you would with intensive self-structured learning or classes at a university, but it takes way less effort and is far more approachable.
That being said, definitely look somewhere else now that Duolingo is using AI.
Apart from the basic learning at the beginning when I didn’t knew anything it is helpful to grasp some basic things and see if I wanted to invest more time and resources.
Now my current method to learn is with proper classes and use Anki to solidify the material I’ve been taught.
Duolingo’s only purpose right now is to learn some new vocabulary and to not lose practice, the friend streaks, and the friend quest is what even in the days that I’m totally unmotivated forces me to not abandon practicing.
I would love to move elsewhere but I’ll lost the only thing that helps me to keep on focus.
Do you know of any good options similar to Duolingo?
I’ve been pissed off with that platform for a couple of years now. They keep changing the structure of lessons and learning paths. I think they’ve been trying to make learning more based on quick rewards at the expensive of context, which I don’t like.
I took a look around for similar apps a coding of years ago, and they all seemed to be one of: a) paid, b) rifled with ads; c) have crappy/buggy UIs. I realize the ads can usually be motivated with a DNS server, but the fact they showed do many ads is kind of a red flag in general. But I know FOSS options have really taken off in the last year or so, so I’m hoping a new, good, free platform has stepped up to tackle Duolingo and the like.
Mango languages is nice, and lots of library systems have licenses so you can unlock the premium features with your library card.
My understanding is that you won’t get fluent but it would give you up to a middle school level understanding, depending on the language. French and Spanish were more advanced than Mandarin or Welsh.
Do you mean middle school level vocabulary? Because I would argue that middle schoolers are absolutely fluent in their native languages. Hell, I think maybe even 9 year olds are fluent.
Fluency in a language learning context is not the same as native speakers. The measure is can you pass a 4th grade grammar class in the given language.
800+ day streak, all gone. I did actually want to keep learning so it pushed me to start taking lessons. Ai is so bad it got me talking to people. 😔
I used it for a week, I was harassed by application and I uninstalled it. I don’t want to be in a relationship right now.
Everyones sayin duolingos shit cause of ai but i tried hungarian(native) on it once and it was already horrible. Failed a test three times on it lol. Also the whole thing is designed to make you feel like youre learning samething but youre not.
I’m still hoping for a FOSS language learning platform to replace these type of services. DuoLingo seems rather limited, to what crowds of volunteers could create by working together.
Lingonaut seems promising, but it isn’t open source, or at least not yet. The creator seems open to being convinced though?
Early Duolingo was curated and corrected by the community. Clearly people were volunteering to do it, so I don’t know why they removed all the community tools and are now using AI to fill the gap.
the problem is them or some other vc backed thief will use all those resource to give it for free with much better packaging then go back to their parasitic way once that foss project is dead.
They did that “prank” where they killed Duo. But they really did kill him
